The convergence of modern networking, communications, computing, semiconductor, and/or other technologies has enabled what is known as the “Internet of Things” (IoT). The devices or “things” in an IoT environment can be characterized by their ability to communicate with one another and/or with other systems to exchange data and/or to carry out other operations at the device and/or in the environment. One class of such devices includes “smart” lighting products for home or commercial use. For example, a smart lighting product (e.g., lamp) might have various embedded components that facilitate communication and control of certain operating characteristics of the lighting product. For example, the on/off state or brightness of lamps might be controlled wirelessly from a smart phone. In this case, the embedded components that facilitate such functionality might comprise a wireless transceiver, a microcontroller with embedded software, one or more sensors, and/or other components. The embedded components are often low-cost components with limited breadth of functionality so as to achieve a product cost that is acceptable to the market.
Unfortunately, embedded components can become functionally obsolete long before the underlying functionality of the product (e.g., lighting capability of a lamp) has reached its end of life. This can lead to undesired expenses due to replacement costs involving material and labor. For example, the wireless transceiver of a smart lamp might be designed to accommodate a certain frequency band of a certain communications standard (e.g., 2.4 GHz for ZigBee) when first implemented in a particular operating environment. If a different communications standard with a different frequency band (e.g., 800-900 MHz for Z-Wave) is to be implemented in the environment, the lamp will be incompatible with that environment. Furthermore, the embedded software (e.g., firmware) of the microcontroller in the smart lamp might need to be modified to accommodate the new communications standard and/or to accommodate other changes to the operating environment (e.g., at higher layers in the open systems communication (OSI) model). However, no mechanism exists for changing the firmware of the microcontroller that is embedded in the lamp.
What is needed is a low-cost way to modify the interfacing functionalities of an illumination product so as to accommodate certain changes that may occur in its operating environment.